Hospital patients dying due to lack of post-operative care, finds new study

Hospital patients are dying needlessly after surgery because they are not given proper care, a report has claimed.

Hospital patients are dying needlessly after operations, according to new research (Picture: Alamy)

Almost three-quarters of people who died after unplanned operations were not admitted to critical care and were instead sent to general wards.

Of those who were admitted to intensive care but transferred to a general ward after going under the knife 43 per cent died, a Europe-wide study found.

In Britain, 3.6 per cent of patients die within 60 days of surgery but in Germany, which admits almost twice the number of patients to critical care, the death rate is 2.5 per cent.

In Poland, just two per cent of people get special treatment after surgery – resulting in a death rate of 17.9 per cent.

‘Failure to allocate resources to patients at risk of death is a serious concern for patients undergoing surgery in Europe,’ said Dr Rupert Pearse, who led the European surgical outcomes study which did not include cardiac operations.

‘In the long term, if there are fewer complications with surgery, that will be a saving for the hospital and it will, of course, be much better for the patient.’ said Dr Pearse from Queen Mary, University of London.

He said more needed to be done to focus critical care attention on the ten per cent of patients that accounted for more than 80 per cent of the deaths.

‘These are often the elderly who have other medical conditions such as diabetes. But we are not admitting ten per cent of patients to critical care in the UK,’ he told the Lancet.